She stopped, realized she was being a bit previous and making a fool of herself, so coughed in an embarrassed manner before smoothing her skirt absently and sitting down again.

“Sorry. Welcome to the presentation. Here are your badges and your information pack. If you would like to go in, Captain Scintilla will join you soon.”

We dutifully took our seats, and Friday slouched in a very obvious don’t-give-a-monkey’s manner until I told him to sit up straight, which he didn’t like but sat up nonetheless.

“What are we doing here?” he asked in a bored voice. “And why the time industry? What about plumbing or something?”

“Because your grandfather was a time operative.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, “and look what happened to him.”

Landen and I exchanged glances. Friday was right. Ending up not having existed wasn’t a terrific end to a promising career.

“Well!” said a youthful-looking man in the pale blue uniform of the ChronoGuard who up until now had been helping escort the previous group out of the room. “My name is Captain Bendix Scintilla, and I am head of ChronoGuard Recruitment. I’d like to welcome all of you to this ChronoGuard careers presentation and hope that this short talk might go some way toward explaining what it is that we done. Did. Do. Anyhow, my aims are twofold: secondly, to try to demonstrate to the young people here that a career in the time industry is a very exciting prospect indeed and, firstly, to lift the lid on the Temporal Trade and explode a few common myths and misunderstandings. As I’m about to say, did say or would say, my name is Bendix Scintilla, and I was died on March sixteenth, 3291. I’m twenty-three years old in my own personal time, seven hundred and twenty-six in my elapsed work time, and you meet me twenty-seven percent through my life.”

He smiled, unaware that he was making very little sense. I was used to it, but by the manner in which the rest of the audience members were scratching their heads and looking at one another, they weren’t. Bendix picked up a solid bar of yellow plastic that was about three feet long, two inches wide and domed at either end.

“Does anyone know what this is?” he asked. There was silence, so he passed it to the nearest family and told them to pass it on. “Anyone who can guess wins a prize.”

The first family shrugged and passed it to us. Friday gave it the most cursory of glances, and I passed it on.

“Yes, sir?” asked Bendix, pointing to a man in the front row who was with his painfully thin wife and a pair of geeky-looking twins.

“Me?” said the man in a confused voice.

“Yes. I understand you have a question? Sorry, I should have explained. To save time I thought I’d ask you before you actually raised your hand.”